by Guy Antibes
Before the woman could say another word, the three of them were on their way. They entered the meeting and Deechie turned around, holding the pot that Fistian had modified.
“You’re here,” Deechie said, surprised to see them.
“No thanks to you,” Whit said. “Is he representing my group or the magic college team?”
The head of the university held up Whit’s letter. “You terminated him from your team, you should know.”
“And you should know that all the artifacts he brought back from Perisia were stolen from our group,” Whit said. “They are all fakes we planted so he thought he had taken the real ones.”
“Fakes? That’s your word against mine,” Deechie said.
“I have lots of words to say against yours,” Whit said. “Let me show you.” Whit walked up to the human and took the pot from his hand. He went to the table of four judges and showed them the pot. “A genuine part has the rainbow finish, but not like this.”
“And you have a real part, you say?”
“Torius Pott has one in his possession. I was going to save that fact since it is a family heirloom. I can bring it in to show you.”
“Again, Pott’s word against mine. He’s an old gnome, anyway,” Deechie said.
Whit shook his head. “I don’t know what difference that makes. Let me show you something.” Whit turned the object upside down and used his fingernail to scratch off a layer of false finish. Underneath, it said “FAKE - Made by Fistian Torque.”
“Would a real Augur’s Eye part have this maker’s mark?” Whit asked.
“Let me see that,” Deechie said. His eyes grew wide as he saw the inscription. “No!”
“You are trying to pass off phony parts, Whit Varian?” a magic college professor asked.
“No. I didn’t present that to you, Deechie did. The letter is only the beginning of what Deechie did to us. He colluded with the minister of the interior of Perisia to burn my carriages and have his men attack our team with the intent to kill us all. As we were leaving Perisia, Professor Paros Porch lost his life leading another desperate ambush. Deechie contracted thirty thugs to attack our team. Luckily, we had an escort and gave as good as we got. We all have burns from the fight.”
“Paros Porch, dead?” Donna Ristian said.
“Due to Deechie’s poor leadership,” Whit said. “If you need witnesses, I can bring in Barine Jarkian and Sergeant Oriole. They were tied up and were probably going to be killed along with my team, but we were able to thwart that attack too.”
“Impossible!” Deechie said.
“If it is evil, nothing is impossible for you,” Zarl said. “I am not an elf like the rest of you are, but Whit is telling the truth.” He rolled up his arm to show a burn scar. “One of the pixie bolt scars that I bear.”
Argien bared his chest. “I have another,” Argien said pointing to a wound just beneath a rib. “Luckily, pixie bolts do most of their damage to similar-sized pixies. Elves and angels—”
“And ogres,” Zarl corrected.
“They are larger and dissipate the magic better. We all survived.”
“What happened to Porch?” the university head asked.
“He attacked me repeatedly while directing the ambush. We fought; I killed him.”
Deechie growled and pointed his finger at Whit. “He should be arrested!”
“Porch was killed in Perisia. I brought his body back with me along with the body of one of Porch’s team members that tried to kill Barine Jarkian and her cousin. Do you think I would have brought back evidence if I was guilty?”
“You might be that stupid,” Deechie said.
“I found real artifacts in Perisia. Did Deechie?”
“Show us one,” the head of the university said.
“This isn’t from the Eye, but it is ancient.” Whit withdrew the wand that Saint Varetta led him to. “I found this in Perisia too. It is not part of the expedition’s relics.”
He handed the wand to the head of the university. “I can feel the power snapping at me,” she said.
The others handled the wand. One magic professor held it in his hands. “You know whose want this was?” he said solemnly.
“Saint Varetta,” Whit said. “The king of Perisia knows I have it.”
“The king, you say?”
Whit nodded. “Deechie had an audience with the king early on. I saw him tossed out of the throne room just after it.”
“Is that right, Greeb?” the same magic professor asked.
Deechie just lifted his chin and remained silent until he said in a small voice, “Lies.”
Whit could see that no one believed him.
“Can you use this?” the magic professor asked.
“I can.” Whit held onto the top of the wand and drained away the magic.
“What do you feel now?”
The astonished professor said, “Magic, faintly.”
Whit gently took the wand away from the professor and filled it with what he guessed was pixie magic and handed it back. “And now?”
The professor dropped the wand as if bitten. “Is that pixie magic?”
“Mine, not Saint Varetta’s,” Whit said. “If you don’t mind, the expedition hasn’t finished yet. My artifacts are secured, and I will present them when we return from our last trip for the summer. We will present at least four objects, and hopefully more, in four weeks.”
The four judges ignored Deechie. “That is acceptable,” the head of the university said.
“Thank you for tolerating me,” Whit said.
“He has to be lying,” Deechie said.
Amazingly, Donna Ristian still supported Deechie. “You will take over from the departed Paros Porch.”
The other judges stared at Donna Ristian in disbelief, but Whit knew the Magician’s Circle had just spoken to Deechie.
“Where do I take the bodies?”
“To the mortuary at the bottom of the hill,” the head of the university said. “Unfortunately, you know where that is.”
“I do,” Whit said as the three of them left the room.
“Now they know about your wand,” Argien said as they walked down from the administration building.
Whit shook his head. “Plenty of people have seen it. I needed a dramatic demonstration to show we had real treasures.”
“That was plenty dramatic enough,” Zarl said. “Why didn’t you bring one of the Eye components?”
“Deechie could say we stole it from him or some other lie. I’m sure he is lying right now as he tries to explain himself,” Whit said. “I’ll show them all at once along with the documentation that we brought from Perisia. Documentation that Deechie doesn’t have.”
“But he’s right, you know,” Argien said. “For the worst of what Deechie has done it is his word against ours.”
Whit laughed as they walked out of the university administration building. “We can’t let that bother us. Let’s get prepared for the next two days, and then it’s on to our next adventure.”
The End
Augur’s Eye Characters & Locations
Characters
The Rise of Whit
Whit Varian - Mixed-breed elf
Naman Varian - Whit’s father; sky elf
Oleana Varian - Whit’s late mother; wood elf
Garret Jarkian - Paper merchant and Barine’s brother
Barine Jarkian - Daughter of a merchant in Herringbone; sky elf
Argien - Magic college student; angel
Greeb Deechie - Magic college teaching assistant; human magician
Torius Pott - Retired professor; gnome
Lily Gorange - Teacher at Kort’s Academy; wood elf
Glory Bache - Landlady and Naman’s old flame
Canis Bache - Glory’s husband; a civil servant
Sergeant “Sedge” Oriole- Barine Jarkian’s cousin; sky elf
Laring Gambol - Professor and martial arts expert; gnome
Fistian Torque - Fellow member of Ga
mbol’s class
Donna Ristian - Magic professor; sky elf
Paros Porch - Magic professor; sky elf
Yetti Haslia - Magister’s Club receptionist; pixie
Zarl- Graduate student; ogre
Rastian Potrian- (Razz) Scout player and logistician; sky elf
The King’s Spy
Jaken Torpian - Of the Aycean Magician’s Circle
Piesson “Pin” Nistia - Yetti’s relation
Ritta Misennia - Perisian partisan
Ornnis- Pixie historian at a museum
Saint Varetta - Patron saint of Perisia (pixies)
King Quiller Proller - King of Perisia
Ornetta Carlia - Prime Minister of Perisia
Lullan Gastian - Perisian interior minister
Jonny Evia - Local Perisian businessman
Fanni - A local healer
Hanny Daslia - Security assistant to the PM
Ionna Teria - Retired pixie historian
Locations
Ayce – Open to all folk, but is in sky elf control
Whistle Vale- Whit’s home village of wood elves
Turpentine - Closest town to Whistle Vale
Herringbone - Capital of the country of Ayce
Northlake - Town to northwest of Herringbone
Perisia – Closed pixie country. Other folk can only visit.
Garri- Capital of Perisia
Hammer Town- Town between Garri and Willet’s Bay
Willet’s Bay- Birthplace of Saint Varetta
Lilypond- A small town close to Yetti’s retreat
Old Garri- Old capital of Perisia, now a ruin
Excerpt from Chapter One
of The Queen’s Pet
~
Book Three
~
Broken glass shattered the silence in Whit Varian’s house. Whit, an elf; Argien, an angel; and Zarl, an ogre, ran into the corridor from their bedrooms.
“It came from downstairs,” Zarl said.
“No,” Argien said. “It was down the hall.”
Whit shook his head. “We are being attacked from multiple places!” He ran back into his bedroom and grabbed two wands and turned as he pointed the golden wand at a black-garbed invader. After quickly lighting a magic light, he said, “Get out of my house,”
“Not until we get what we came for. Where are the Augur’s Eye parts?” the intruder said.
Whit laughed. “You’ll never find them,” he said.
The intruder raised his hands, but Whit wasn’t going to wait for an attack and projected a water bubble onto the person’s head. The intruder struggled with the balloon until pointing a finger at the bubble and bursting it with a needle of fire. The water drenched the figure, but Whit wasn’t waiting for another move and shot a bolt of pixie electricity.
The attacker immediately made a spasmodic jerk and dropped to the floor. Whit tossed off the mask, revealing a middle-aged female sky elf. It had to be the Aycean Magician’s Circle. He made sure she wouldn’t be practicing magic any longer and ran toward Argien who had run back down the hall.
Hearing sounds in the dancing hall, on the other side of the bedrooms, Whit walked through the doors to see Argien trading attacks with his foe. Both used all the space around them. Argien was at the ceiling, repelling a flood of water, drenching the new rugs on Whit’s recently furnished room.
“Stop!” Whit yelled.
The intruder glanced at Whit, giving Argien enough time to cast an energy bolt, something the angel had never used in Whit’s presence. Argien’s foe was thrown back and didn’t move.
“On to Zarl, and I hope Torius Pott is sleeping soundly in the basement,” Whit said. He quickly made sure the assassin was dead before he followed Argien down to the main floor.
“Sorry about your floor,” Zarl said, looking down at the body of the third attacker.
Whit lit another magic light to see the damage to his kitchen floor. The tile was uniformly cracked under the third intruder’s body. “I suppose you threw him to the floor?” Whit asked.
“My magic did, hard. I don’t like taking a poke on the arm.” Zarl turned to his right side, showing a knife sticking out from his bicep.
Argien took a towel and ripped Zarl’s sleeve off before binding the ogre’s wound. When he removed the knife, there wasn’t much blood. The angel looked up into the seven-footer’s eyes. “Is this an ogre advantage? No blood?”
Zarl worked his mouth a little. “I wouldn’t say no blood…”
Whit couldn’t help but smile. “Now that the immediate threat is over, let’s make sure there were only three. I’ll take the basement.”
Whit ran down the secret steps to the basement using the kitchen entrance. He felt relieved hearing Torius Pott’s snoring before seeing the gnome in person. He woke up his father’s old friend. “We’ve been attacked.”
“If I was, it was only in my dreams,” Torius said, rubbing his eyes. “How did they get in?” the old gnome said, getting out of bed. He wore a nightshirt that was barely enough to be decent.
“Windows. Argien and Zarl are checking the house,” Whit said.
He walked to the back of the discreet basement apartment that Torius used while Whit was in Perisia finding Augur’s Eye parts. The thick, barred glass was intact.
“Be ready for an attacker,” Whit said as he went into the space in front of the vault and opened the door to the front of the basement.
“There he is!” a voice said.
Three tiny needles of magic light lit up Whit. He quickly shut the door, locked it, and ran through the vault area and back into Torius’s apartment.
“Make sure they don’t get in here,” Whit said as he ran up the hidden stairway back to the kitchen. “Intruders in the basement!” Whit yelled.
Argien was the first to the main level, with Zarl shaking the house following him.
“No one else on any of the upper levels. The dead are all sky elves,” Argien said.
Whit nodded. “There are three more downstairs.” He looked at Zarl. “A little gentler on these stairs,” Whit said with a smile.
Zarl grinned back. “It’s your house. I was a little excited,” Zarl said apologetically.
“Continue to be excited, since I know they are down the stairs. Torius has some stout doors to protect him.”
Whit beckoned his friends to follow. Before they reached the bottom, Whit saw a magic light.
Argien put up a shield between Whit and the intruders. “This isn’t perfect protection, but the shield will give us enough time to get to the bottom.”
Whit exchanged wands for the one that had been so useful in Perisia. Argien’s shield lit up with fire and then with water, creating steam in the basement. Whit pointed his wand and killed the magic of the three intruders. The attack stopped.
“Lights!” Whit said. “Let Zarl and I handle these three.”
Argien created bright light to illuminate the basement.
“You won’t get away with this!” one of the attackers said. “We know you’ve got some means of hiding the parts, now.”
“And who will let you out to tell the tale?” Zarl said. “Your friends are dead upstairs. I think they want some company, wherever they’ve gone. How good are you at fighting with your hands?”
The three men pulled knives, and that was enough to get the final fighting started. A thrown knife clipped Whit’s hand, but even though the assailants couldn’t use magic, Whit and Zarl could, and anticlimactically, two of the three black-clothed intruders were dead on the floor.
The last burglar sat on the floor, sliding back until they reached the wall.
“Too bad there isn’t a pixie around,” Zarl said to Whit. “They can read minds, you know.”
“Perhaps we don’t need their spells. I can put a globe of water around this person’s head and drown them if they don’t tell us who sent them, Whit said.”
“I’m not pledged to stay silent!” a female voice said.
Argien stepped for
ward and pulled off the knit hat the intruder wore. The silvery hair of a sky elf fell to her shoulders. “Who sent you, the College of Magic?”
The elf laughed. “The college means nothing to the circle.”
“The Aycean Magician’s Circle?” Zarl asked.
The captor nodded. “We suspected the parts were in Varian’s house. It looks like we were right. The door leading to the back of the house is too stout.”
“Do you want to see my vault? Perhaps the circle will spare your life if you give them some information,” Whit said.
“Are you crazy?” Zarl whispered into Whit’s ear.
“This way,” Whit said. He muttered the spell that locked the door and pulled on the latch, throwing the door open. The next room mainly had empty shelves, but there were books, portfolios, and trinkets along with sacks of coins on a few of them. “Why wouldn’t I want to keep my valuables safe? I have room for much, much more.”
The woman craned her neck past Whit to see the shelves. “No parts?”
“I’ll give you a quick tour,” Whit said.
She stepped past Whit and looked at the shelves, even taking a few books and thumbing the pages. “These are common spell books.”
Whit shrugged. “I can’t get educated in the College of Magic. I have to learn on my own so that I can complete my degree in magical devices at the university.”
“Five of my friends died for this?”
“They did. If you had asked instead of invading my home, I would have taken you down here to show you,” Whit said.
Argien and Zarl stepped into the room and did some of their own rummaging around. “We haven’t been in here either,” Zarl said, looking at the empty shelves as well as the full ones.
“What do you want me to do with the bodies? I assume you are all from the Magician’s Circle.”
“I won’t tell you that,” the woman said. “Leave them out in the front. I’ll arrange to have them properly taken care of.”
Whit wished he had a spell to knock someone unconscious, but he cut off some rope from a coil in the front basement and bound the woman’s hands. “I suggest you get them removed as quickly as you can.”
